Page 59 of Bitten By Desire

“Yet,” she answered, doing her own gliding down the steps. Around the room, her twiglike minions melted off the walls and closed in around me in a circle. I ignored them. The prison balls lay outside of their ring, and that suited me just fine.

“Not ever,” I countered, half focused on her, half on the energetic feel of the balls on the other side of the room.

Slowly, one by one, they rose mere centimeters from the ground. I called up a vision in my mind of the doorway to the in between opening only wide enough for them to fit through and as close to them as possible.

“And how do you expect to leave this time?” The queen asked, focused on me as I hoped. “I have a charm that prevents you using mind bending on me.” She grinned wider, showing off needlelike teeth made of wood.

“Let’s test that out,” I said, turning toward the closest fairy in the circle. “Sit down,” I told it.

It dropped to its bottom on the dirt, and the queen clapped, laughing again as though I’d done it for her amusement. Meanwhile, the balls slipped through the portal one by one, as slowly as possible so as not to draw attention to them.

“I said I have a charm,” she corrected, stepping closer. At the same time, her circle of fiends moved closer as well…too close.

“All of you, sit,” I said, and they all dropped to the ground with a crackle of twigs.

The queen squinted at me, and as happened once before, my mouth completely disappeared from my face, skin grown over where it used to be. For a moment, I panicked, not understanding how she could do this when I wasn’t corporeal. But then one of the twig army stood and swiped at me, and its hand passed through my arm.

I needn’t worry about them then. Just the queen.

Three of the four balls were through the exit now, I just had to hold on a minute or two longer…

“I need your body, too, if I want to make you wear the pretty leash I made,” she cooed. She reached out toward me, and I recoiled, nearly falling through the fairy behind me. “Do you imagine I can’t keep the rest of you here until I retrieve your body?”

I’d never imagined the queen could have that much power. My heart sped up, or at least it felt like it probably did, back on the table. Focus, I demanded. Then I pulled at my magic and sent the queen flying back into the unforgiving edges of the throne.

She shrieked as I pushed the last ball through the hole with my mind. But as I turned, calling the full-size exit into existence, I found myself gliding in the opposite direction. I reached out in an attempt to grab hold of something—anything to pull myself away and escape, but there was nothing I could clutch, even the fae, watching with empty eyes as I was drawn slowly toward the queen.

I spun to face her when I finally accepted not being able to stop it and found her holding open a glowing sphere that had dissected in half to flop open like a mouth. She was going to trap me inside of it just as she had the others. And the others…they were floating in the nothingness between dimensions. What had I done?

She stopped me in front of her, chest to chest, as she held out the open orb, then reached up to run the backs of her fingers along my cheek. To my horror, I could feel the contact.

How? I tried to ask through my sealed mouth. It came out as a sort of grunt from my throat.

“I am the queen of the fae.” She leaned in with silver eyes glowing as she captured my gaze. “You will learn not to underestimate me.” Then she leaned in and kissed me as I struggled to move away.

Suddenly, her head shot upward, and she gasped. I was drawn far faster than before, away from her and across the room. Bres stepped in front of me and cracked his neck.

“What are you doing, you fool of a man?” the queen demanded.

“Ensuring I can still render my side of the bargain, you double-crossing bitch.”

It took only seconds for me to call on my escape route and burst through just as a blast of power from one of them sent the room into chaos.

I landed in Pythia’s arms, crying, my mouth returned to its natural place on my body.

She held me as I regained rational thought. When I felt okay, I pulled back and breathed despite the lack of actual air. I supposed that was what it was like for Julian when he didn’t need oxygen but had to speak.

“You did it again,” she said, motioning until the four soap-bubble-like balls floated up between us.

“Barely and only because of Bres,” I said. Then my eyes fixed on the tiny people inside their prisons, each with hands pressed up against the surface of the sphere.

I found Em immediately and smiled with relief. Then I noticed the others—the people they’d replaced with changelings. There was Hector, the ex-witch liaison, Lorraine, and I screamed, throwing a hand over my mouth as a tiny, weak Daphne curled on the bottom of her orb, hands pressed to the sides and head bowed. How long had the queen been holding her? It had to have been since before my mother’s murder. Months, and I’d never even suspected… Poor Daphne had suffered for so long without anyone knowing to look for her.

“She was kept barely alive by the queen’s magic for her amusement,” Pythia said sadly. “You have to get her home to her land.”

I gave a curt nod and opened the pink door again, this time focusing on Daphne’s basement as I guided the balls through.

“Thank you,” I said before following them out.

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